Monday, November 23, 2015

Prize Monies

Correction about my previous post about the Ole Ole tournament offering RM 200 for first prize for both open and junior category. My mistake, it's RM300.

Nevertheless, one veteran chess player commented that during the BPM allegro over two decades ago the first prize money was RM 300. Back then that was a lot of money so many top players travel from state to state to try to win as much as they could.

Now, we still see tournaments with RM 300 for first prize !!

I think that just shows the state of chess in Malaysia. Sure, the frequency of small weekend tournaments is healthy but it hasn't progress much since the days of the BPM allegros. Of course, by evolution, we will have the odd but special tournaments where players are lucky to see prizes like RM 2000 and RM 1000 like the recent Pekan and Tronoh rapid event.

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3 comments:

I rarely write anymore nowadays - even my blog site has been rather "dead" for the past one year or so. But for this one, somehow I am compelled to say what is in my mind.

Agree that the prize money has not changed much since the last decade or so but perhaps, a few things need to be considered:1) Does the entry fees change as well? My observation is that it has not changed much either. But of course, bigger prize money usually requires bigger entry fees - which many are reluctant to fork out.2) Agree that most prize money is still the same but, there is one major difference.... Many tournaments before were sponsored by corporations and the prize fund was low then. Nowadays, there are many "smaller" companies that provide the prize fund, or some small time entrepreneurs who happen to love chess and decide to sponsor events. Even better, there are also tournaments that are even self funded between groups and friends that wants to have good quality matches. To a certain extent, that is progress where the community can sustain its own activities.3) But, even with the higher prize money offered, most of them, does not come back to Malaysians anyways. I have no issue with foreigners winning the prize fund but ultimately, I also want to see that some of the bigger prize money can be won by local players which is still lacking4) The cost to organize an event is not so much about the prize fund but more on the logistics i.e. the sites, the equipment, the arbiters, etc. Prize fund usually counts for less than 25% of all the total expenses required to manage an event. With the cost going high, even with high sponsorship, most of the money ended up in the organizers pocket - literally! For most of them, its business first. For some of them, its "my pocket" first. But the rising cost of living is something that affects the outcome as well as to why prize money never went up.

1) for those standard RM 300 prizes tourney - yeah from my observations the entry fees are about the same today as in the days of BPM ( not one decade but TWO decades ago!)

2) agreed that the community can sustain it's own tourneys instead of relying on just sponsorship but let's face it, most of the tournaments are still under someone's sponsorship be it a corporation or personally by an individual. Also with most of the chess clocks, boards and other equipment already purchased over the years, setting up a tournament is so much easier today.

3) can be controlled as some tournaments have shown. Only locals allowed or prize funds limited to locals etc.

4) sad but true.

Altruism is sadly something very rare in Malaysian chess. As such we will continue seeing the same prize monies being offered ..

I just want to say a thing. The prize structure of prestigious Astro Merdeka team event is static all the time but registration fee is increasing at least twice as far as I concern. Looks like the fee is along the pace of inflation but sadly not the prize structure.